


As You Drift

by Marmoniel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coffee Shops, DPDR, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Illness, Modern Era, no magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5617537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marmoniel/pseuds/Marmoniel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus Lupin's brain is broken. It insists that the world isn't real, and he doesn't have the energy to fight it anymore. And Sirius Black just makes it worse. So why can't Remus stay away from him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	As You Drift

**Author's Note:**

> All things about DPDR are from my experiences with the disorder, and Remus' experience of it is heavily based off my DPDR. 
> 
> Self harm is in the story, mentions of suicide in later chapters. Talk of unreality and dissociation. Also, implied abuse later on.

Remus can feel his mind drifting away as he takes another breath. And another. If he wanted to get his mind back, he might have been able to. But really, why would he?

He drifts further and further away and…

  
_Bright red of Lil’s hair, swishing by._

_Blink._

_Open eyes. Open mouth. Eating? Salty taste._

_Blink._

_Pain on arms. Red. Red. Blood. Spilling. Clean it up!!! Clean it up! Clean -_

_Blink._

_Sitting at desk, stare. Blankly stare at teacher._

_Blink._

_Coffee. Bitter coffee. Warm smile from barista. Don’t notice._

_Blink._

_Home. Draw. Smudge pencil. Messy hands._

_Stand. Trip. Knock glass off table._

_Wet. Cold._

_Blink._

_Blink._

_Blink._

  
When Remus fully got his mind back, he was lying on his bed, still in his clothes from… yesterday? He was wet. He didn’t know why. He faintly remembered water? Remus wasn’t sure.

He looked at the time. It’s only the weekend though, so he didn’t have class or anywhere to be.

Then his phone buzzed

The screen read: ‘Lily’, and her message said:

_Lily: ‘Hey, Rem! Wanna meet for coffee at the usual place? You can flirt with the cute guy again!!! xx’_

Remus ignored the pounding in his head, the pain on his arms. He threw on a warm jumper over the blood that dried on his arms and underneath his fingernails. He briefly stopped to try to remember how it happened this time, but he didn’t really care. He didn’t care anymore about anything. Anyway, the fuzziness in his brain that felt like thinking through cotton was enough to stop him from trying too hard to remember.

Flicking a quick text back, he ran out the door and onto a bus that was just about to pull away.

_Remus: ‘Yhea jst gv m fv mns, k, lv u bb xxxxx’_

The reply comes back quickly.

_Lily: ‘You alright, Rem? That didn’t make much sense?’_

Remus reread his last text and realised that it indeed, didn’t make any sense. When he rewrote his original text, he found that he had to pay very close attention to his phone screen to write out the words properly.

_Remus: ‘Sorry, meant to say Yeah, just give me five minutes, okay, love you babe xxxxxxx’_

Lily obviously didn’t have much to do, as she replied almost instantly.

_Lily: ‘Such a trouble maker, Rem. Anyways, got some juicy news for ya!’_

_Remus: ‘Oh I honestly, can’t wait. How will I ever contain my excitement.’_

Lily didn’t lower herself to reply to his sarcasm.

  
As Remus was sitting on the bus, he realised that his mind still wasn’t fully back in it’s place. He still felt… off.

This wasn’t new of course. He’d been dissociating since he was small. And he’d even gone to a therapist, and he’d been diagnosed with DPDR. When he’d learnt about it, he went home and research all that he could about his disorder. He’d managed to sum it up to this:

DPDR, aka, Depersonalization Derealization Disorder. A mental disorder, where your mind repeatedly dissociates and you feel like you’re not real, the world around you isn’t real, or both.

Remus was one of the lucky people who got both. Along with several other crappy symptoms and side effects.

Like the insomnia that came hand in hand. The black outs. The bouts of severe depression, and also the constant level of general depression. The pills that came along with the disorder, and made him not himself. The time loss. The memory loss. Heaps of things really. Heaps of things that made Remus Lupin want to tear himself apart, starting with his broken brain.

Lily knew. Kind of. She knew that he saw a therapist. Nothing else really. She’d seen him once when he had been in a bad way, and was crying constantly, hurting himself, and wouldn’t leave his apartment. She’d been wonderful though, and had just held him when he cried and hadn’t asked him anything. Neither of them had forgotten (Remus was ashamed, Lily was concerned) but they just didn’t talk about it. Ever.

Remus luckily looked up in time, and he came to his stop. He thanked the bus driver quietly, as he couldn’t make his voice go any louder. He just felt so distant. So distant, and cold, and small.

When he got to the coffee shop that Lily insisted made the best coffee in town (and he’d be the worst to admit, that the hot barista there definitely did make amazing coffee) he saw Lily in her usual spot at the back corner of the cafe.

“Rem!” Lily said happily, and hugged him. He hugged back, and made his arms go as tight as they could. Which was not very much. _(..pathetic, can’t even hug someone right, why would anyone ever want you, freak, just go cry yourself to sleep and…)_

“Shall I go order for us, before you start telling me all about this juicy gossip?” Remus said to Lily, even as he stands up redardless of her answer.

“You just wanna look at the cute guy, don’t you, Lupin.” Remus just forces a cheeky grin onto his face and goes up to the counter.

The ‘cute guy’ that Lily was talking about looks around Remus’ age, had thin greyish-silver eyes and long black hair which is tied into a bun, flawless nail polish, and always seems to be wearing band t-shirts. Remus was pretty sure that he was south-east Asian. Remus had never seen him wear the same one twice, and as he went there almost every day with Lily, that was saying something.

“Can I grab a flat white with extra whippy milk stuff for the lady, and a long black for me, please? Uh, also take away cups, thanks.”

Just looking into the boy’s lovely silvery eyes was enough to push Remus further away from reality. Which probably wasn’t a good thing. His therapist was always telling him to avoid his triggers. But something about that boy made him keep going back. It was just the boy’s beautiful eyes. (And face. And hands. And body.) It was the easy smile that stretched across his face whenever he saw Remus. It was the look of determination shown so freely on his face when he was trying to make the perfect coffee. It was the absent stretches that Remus caught out of the corner of his eye, as the barista languidly and gracefully stretched his arms above his head and cracked his neck. It was the cute wink he gave Remus every time he handed him his perfect coffee. It was… well, everything really. The boy was perfect to Remus. _(… and you’re just a monster and a freak and you’ll never be good enough for anyone especially not him. He deserves so much better than a broken, fragile, freak…)_

Remus waited for the coffees at the counter and he got his usual wink. He took a sip of his long black, smiled at the boy, then went back to their table.

“Remus Lupin, just man up and ask the man out, already! I’m sick of your googly eyes for him.” Lily looked at him with pleading in his eyes.

“Come on, Lils. Like I’m good enough for him.” He said it quietly but she still caught it. When she opened her mouth to argue, he cut her off. “So anyway, what’s that news you were gonna tell me about?”

She frowned but let it go, and soon her trademark ‘I’m in love’ smile was on her face.

“I met someone, Rem!” She stopped and stared dreamily at her fingers, which were tangled around her coffee.

“And? How’d you meet? Do I have to threaten this someone?”

Lily laughed. “Well, he’s another barista here.” She blushed. “And… he may have split coffee on me.”

“Sounds like an asshole already. I’ll go find a sharp kitchen knife.” Remus said, smiling because Lily was. He was happy for her. She’d gotten out of a bad relationship with a person that Remus had never liked, and it was about time that she found someone who made her happy. _(… because you don’t. You’re not good enough. You never will be. Freak…)_

“Okay, so his name’s James, and he asked me to dinner on Wednesday. I did suggest coffee, but he said that he never wanted to taste another coffee in his life. I think he was joking, though.” Lily rambled on about their meeting, and Remus just felt himself blurring between reality and whatever other world he spent so much of his life in. “Remus? Are you alright?”

Remus jolted and blinked sluggishly at the ginger. “Yeah, sorry. Stayed up late last night.” He wrapped his hands tighter around his cup, and willed the heat to bring him back to the ‘real world’. (He was currently doubting just how real it was, but that was what his therapist called it.) “I’m happy for you, Lils. I really am.” He put a small smile on his face. Then he took another sip of his coffee. The warmth filled his stomach, and helped banish some of the fuzziness in his brain.

They idly chatted about university, and their courses. (Lily was taking journalism, and Remus was taking art.) Lily complained about her boring teacher. Remus nodded when appropriate, and redirected any questions of hers back to her somehow. (It was an art that he’d perfected to try and stay unnoticed.)

Lily’s phone buzzed, and she looked exasperated and annoyed as she read the text.

“Ugh, sorry Rem. My room-mate’s freaking out about some ridiculous thing. I gotta go. I’ll text you later though!” She was gone quickly, leaving Remus with a quick kiss on the cheek. _(… of course she left you. Everyone leaves you. You’re not worth staying for. I mean, just look at your mother. She left. All your fault. She’s gone, and it’s All. Your. Fault…)_

Remus left the coffee shop with a troubled look in his eyes, and missed the friendly wave that his favourite barista gave him.

When he got home, after another short bus ride, Remus snatched up one of his many sketch books from god knows where, and started sketching… something. His therapist was always trying to get him to draw his feelings and emotions, and claimed that it would ‘help to get it all out there. It will kick-start the healing process.’ As if Remus was ever going to ‘heal’. Plus, maybe he didn’t want to! He wasn’t broken, he was just different. And sometimes dissociating felt nice. It was primarily a coping method, anyway.

Remus sighed to himself. Who was he kidding? He was broken. And different. And he hated dissociating. The way it felt was okay, but the mess it made afterwards was horrendous and annoying to try to clean up.

He went back to his sketch, and barely paid attention to what he was drawing. As the lines on the page became darker, his mind becam lighter and soon he was floating. Far, far from his body.

And…

_Draw line. Make it darker. Darker. Darker. Darker. Not dark enough._

_Holes in the paper._

_Too dark?_

_No. Needs to be darker. Need to see it._

_See the line._

_Still not dark enough._

_Look at paper._

_No lines on paper._

_Look around you._

_Ripped pieces of paper everywhere. Scrunched up._

_Broken pencil. In three pieces around._

_Splinters in your hands._

_Doesn’t hurt._

_Hurts a lot._

_You don’t know._

_Breathe._

_Hurts._

_Breathing hurts._

_Water on your face._

_Crying?_

_Sad. Hurts. Sad._

_Pain in your chest. Hurts. Heart attack? No… Sad._

_Wanna talk._

_Can’t talk._

_Can only cry._

_Wanna call… what was her name?_

_Wanna call… red._

_Wanna call… big smile._

_Wanna call… give up. Don’t know her name._

_Can’t remember._

_Cry harder because… Because you failed her._

_Failed who?_

_Her._

_Sound._

_Loud._

_Annoying._

_Loud._

_Sound._

_What?_

_SHUT UP!_

  
Remus’ phone rung and was undeniably loud and annoying. However, it was just what he needed, and he came back to himself quickly.

“Hey, Rem! Listen, you’ve not been answering my texts, so I’m just assuming that you’re drawing your little heart out. But anyway, I wanna ask if you wanna hang out with James and his friends? We’re going to get drinks tonight!”

“Uh, sure, I guess. Where?”

“New bar on Privet!”

“Okay, uh, Lils, what day is it?” Remus noticed that his voice was scratchy, and hoped that Lily would just put it down to bad connection or something.

“Friday. The 3rd. Why?”

“Just wondering. So, what time?”

“8! See you there, gotta go, bye, love you!” And Lily was gone, taking her cheer with her.

However she did leave Remus with his clear-ish mind, which was firmly stationed back in reality. _(… for now at least. Who knows when you’re gonna break again. You fuck-up. Reject. What happened was all your fault. You deserved it. You deserved that pain. You deserved it ALL…)_

 

  
Remus turned up to the bar about ten minutes early, and hung outside the bar waiting for Lily and the others. It wasn’t soon before the enthusiastic red-head swept in, with her bright clothes and pearly smile.

“Rem! Anyone else here yet?” Remus didn’t have time to even shake his head, before Lily was talking again. “Well, of course not, otherwise they’d be here, duh.”

“So who’s actually coming?” Remus asked her.

“Okay, so, you, me, James, and two of his friends. Uh, Peter, and… Sirius? I think, was his name?”

Remus felt sympathy for the man with the strange name. He understood what it was like. Lily often teased him, saying that he was never going to find his name on a personalized mug. Of which, Remus was extremely disappointed, of course. He was determined to one day make himself a personalized mug, just to prove her wrong. When he told Lily about this plan, just smirked, and commented on how lazy he was, and how he’d never do that. The day after that conversation, when Remus’ mind aligned with the world again, he found that he’d smashed every mug in his kitchen in his dissociated state.

The two friends stood, shivering slightly in the cool air, chatting idly. THey heard talking coming up behind them, and suddenly Lily was jumped on by someone. Remus assumed it was James. When James got off Lily, he turned to Remus and stuck out his hand.

“James Potter, nice to meet you! Remus, I assume?” Remus nodded.

James was tall and lanky. He had darker skin, and messy hair. Very messy. Green eyes, and crooked glasses. Also messy hair. Did Remus mention the messy hair?

“As her best friend, I’m obligated to tell you that if you hurt her, I will tear your balls off. Got it?” Remus stepped closer to James, and made his voice almost a growl.

James looked startled to hear such a threat coming from a such a lost, timid looking person, then his face changed to slightly scared when he realised that Remus was still up in his face.

Lily pulled Remus back, frowning at him. “Remus Lupin! I can take care of myself, thank you very much!”

Despite her angry words, Remus knew that she was slightly pleased that he’d done that. For years now, they’d only had each other. They were family. And Remus would not let anyone hurt his family.

He felt a finger poke his shoulder and Remus turned around to greet James’ friends with a slightly nicer welcome.

Before he could say anything, he found himself staring into a pair of familiar silver eyes. They were crinkled slightly, and his face was arranged into an easy grin.

“Nice to properly meet you, Remus!” His favourite barista said.

Remus suddenly couldn’t talk, all he could do was look at the other boy. He derealized suddenly, and without warning, Something about his eyes, Remus thought absently. It felt like the air had been forced out of his chest. Managing a miraculous smile, Remus muttered something that hopefully made sense. Remus sure as fuck didn’t understand what he just said.

He knew that the world wasn’t real, and Sirius (who had introduced himself with a wink) standing next to him, somehow seemed to confirm that. As cheesy as it was, there was no possible way that the universe could create someone like him. So perfect. He swept through the crowd smoothly, and never once fumbled with his words or anything. Remus wondered how he did it. He cared, but didn’t care at the same time.

Remus spent the rest of the night trying to keep himself together, trying not to tip off the fact that he knew that the world wasn’t real. Apparently other people didn’t like hearing that. Whenever he’d told anyone in the past, they just assumed that he was drunk. They also didn’t listen when Remus told them that he didn’t drink. (It make it easier to dissociate and harder to leave that state.)

He kind-of, not really noticed that Sirius had been holding onto his arm the whole night. Almost as if the other boy could sense that something was wrong. Which he couldn’t, of course. Remus had spent his whole life pretending that he was fine, and refused to admit that he was failing.

Finally, the night was over. Everyone had apparently had enough of drinking, and they gathered up their various pieces of stripped clothing, and headed outside into the cool air. (It was enough to make Remus blink, but it wasn’t enough to bring him all the way back, unfortunately.)

“So…” Remus slowly turned to see Sirius standing at his elbow. “Can I get your number maybe? We could hang out sometime?” Even though Sirius’ face seemed confident and his voice, Remus could see something in his eyes. He didn’t know what. And couldn’t think. So he couldn’t even figure it out.

“My…” Remus shook his head slightly, to get rid of some of the fog that had settled all over brain, keeping Sirius’ words from going through. “… What?”

“Your number. Phone number.” Sirius looked slightly concerned. “Are you alright? You seem a little…”

Luckily for Remus, Lily came in and saved him.

“Don’t even bother, he can’t remember things to save his life.” She said, “Give me your phone, and I’ll put it in for him. Also, he’d love to, thank for asking. Right, Remus?” When Remus nodded, Lily turned back to Sirius and said, “He’d been mooning over you for ages now. Just put the poor boy out of his misery.”

Sirius laughed, and Remus watched as his eyes crinkled, and Sirius turned his beautiful eyes to Remus. “Mooning, have you? Alright, then Moony, I’ll text you!”

The next thing that Remus knew, was that Sirius, Peter, and James had left, leaving behind a blush on Remus’ cheeks and a grin on Lily’s.

“Yes! Remus Lupin, eligible bachelor!” She said, excited.

He put a smile on his face. “Yeah. Anyway, I’m frazzled, so I’ll talk to you later?”

Without waiting for a reply, and walked away, and went home. Remus slept badly that night and tossed and turned, his dreams full of silver eyes, and muttered words.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to criticize my work in the comments :) have a great day!


End file.
